With Super Bowl Sunday around the corner, Pizza Hut is preparing to deliver more than two million pies on their busiest day of the year. You can bet a large percentage will be headed to multi-tasking, third-screen gamers.

The Yum Brands-owned company recently announced that its sold $1 million worth of Pizza Hut products via its Xbox Live ordering app in its first four months of availability. But that's not the only surprising statistic coming out of the fast-food staple. The first two Fridays of 2014 saw the biggest days in company history for sales received by a means other than the traditional phone order, and nearly 40 percent of all transactions were digital the first 10 days of 2014.

"Technology is playing a bigger and bigger role in the lives of our consumers and we want to meet them where they are, and where they are right now is online and on mobile devices." said Carrie Walsh, chief marketing officer, Pizza Hut.

The success of the Xbox 360 app portends the addition of other consoles including the Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Wii U.Continue reading...

For the members of Generation Y who (hope they) have stable jobs and incomes and are (reasonably) confident about their financial future, Acura has a message: The brand has a car for you, the new "gateway" model ILX.

The Honda-owned luxury brand is debuting the all-new compact luxury sedan at a starting price of $25,900 with the expectation (and new messaging) that young Americans in their early thirties, with their act together and decent prospects, are going to gravitate to what Acura calls a true luxury car at an attainable entry-level price point.

"This car was specifically designed for these people because of what they've gone through," Mike Accavitti, Acura's U.S. CMO, told brandchannel.Continue reading...

Microsoft released this trailer of Steve Ballmer's CES keynote promoting Avatar Kinect for Xbox 360, one of the ways it's goosing Xbox 360 (along with Netflix streaming and Hulu).

Avatar Kinect, which brings a player's avatar to life, will be rolling out as a free add-on for Xbox Live gold-level members this spring. It aims to make entertainment "more active, more social and more fun" as Ballmer notes (and could liven up business videoconferencing, too).

With that in mind, Microsoft also showcased ESPN on Xbox Live with Kinect (after the jump).Continue reading...

As part of its billion-dollar global marketing spend, Microsoft is touting how Windows Phone 7 (which it's starting to promote as just Windows Phone) integrates Xbox Live (above), Bing search and other products in new spots rolling out in the UK.

The spots will be featured in Microsoft's two-night pre-Christmas ad buy on Channel 4 (running Dec. 21/22) that will encompass Jamie Oliver's Christmas show and another holiday special. Apple also just released a new holiday spot in the US — check it out after the jump.Continue reading...